Me at 13. Just a few months before I was free of Junior High forever.
I hated junior high.
There were mean girls, there were bullies, there was way too much pre-teen angst. I absolutely hated it.
I was fortunate to have a group of friends I adored and they helped me get through those two years but, honestly, I don’t know if I’ve ever been so happy in my life as I was my last day of eighth grade.
Once I was out, I eagerly awaited the delivery of our yearbook. Not because I wanted the memories of the last two years but, hey, there would be pictures of the boys I liked and what thirteen-year-old girl didn’t want a picture of her crush? (Had I grown up in the days of the Internet you could have never gotten me off of Instagram.)
They mailed us our yearbooks over the summer and I went through it excitedly. Then I came upon the legacy pages. You know where they leave something to each student? Some girls were left the boy they liked, some boys were left awesome sports equipment (hey it was 1982). What my class left me devastated me. To the point where I wanted to throw away the yearbook I had so eagerly awaited.
They left me a new walk. That’s exactly how they phrased it too. I can’t remember what I wore on Wednesday but I can still see that in my mind clear as day.
As an adult, I’m angrier at the teachers who let the kids in charge of the yearbook put that in but at the time I absolutely hated the kids involved with publishing the yearbook. Another student was left “her walk” presumably because it was so cute. But they left me a new one. Because I walked funny. And I walked funny because I was born with Spina Bifida.
I was three years and eleven months old before I could walk on my own. (“The Thanksgiving before you turned four” according to my mother.) For those years, my mother spent large parts of most of her days giving me physical therapy for my legs. That isn’t including the spinal surgery I had as an infant and the numerous trips to the doctor. (Which continued after I learned to walk and were so numerous that they kept me out of school in the first grade for over a third of the school year.)
Growing up, unless you were related to me or one of my teachers, not many people were aware of the Spina Bifida. Most of my friends and classmates just knew I was “sick” and had to go to the doctor a lot. They didn’t know that my mother had to fight with the school system in our city to get me into the public school because when she tried to enroll me in kindergarten they wanted to put me in the special class instead. She won, and I went to school with everyone else. I knew I was different but my parents made sure that I didn’t feel different.
There were plenty of bumps before I got to junior high. The Spina Bifida caused issues with my eyes that resulted in two eye surgeries before I hit the second grade. I had difficulty seeing, even with glasses and special lenses, so normal activities like walking down a flight of stairs became terrifying for me because I couldn’t see down the stairs the way everyone else could. I was made fun of for my resulting fear of heights and need to have a classmate walk me down the stairs. (Shout out and huge thanks to Maureen McGarry who almost always seemed to be the one to volunteer to walk with me.) But somehow I got through it unscathed and a straight-A student to boot even though, yes, I walked a bit funny. For the most part, though, the kids in grammar school were great and many helped me when I needed it – without making fun of me.
So my junior high legacy being I needed a new walk crushed me and made me feel for probably the first time in my life that not only did I know I was different, but everyone else knew too and they thought it was weird.
My childhood was spent making trips to the Floating Hospital in Boston. I’d sit in the waiting room with all of the other sick kids and understand that so many other kids were so much worse off than I was. It helped me develop both sympathy and empathy at quite the tender age. It never occurred to me to make fun of someone because they looked different than I did and it sure as hell never struck me funny or something to mock when I saw someone who was sick or injured.
In my young mind, that junior high yearbook was official proof that there was something wrong with me and that it made people want to make fun of me. I silently brooded about it for months. It was the most miserable summer of my life.
As an adult, you think you get past those things. I don’t hold any ill feelings toward any specific kid in my eighth-grade class. (Heck, I don’t even remember which kids were on the yearbook committee.) But I’d be lying to myself if I didn’t admit that it is something that has stayed in the back of my mind for all of these years.
This week something happened that brought it all rushing back to me: Donald Trump mocked someone for his disability just because he doesn’t like him. Actually, he did it because he can. Because, apparently, anything Donald Trump does, no matter how horrible, gets excused by his supporters as his just speaking the truth.
Screw that.
The list of horrible things Donald Trump has said and done is much too long for me to focus on here so I won’t. And I won’t get into what kind of politician I think he is or what I think of the people who are genuinely supporting his campaign to be President. I suppose the reason I’m writing this entire entry is because even now, even as an adult who has lived a (relatively) long and (relatively) normal life, I can not believe that there are people out there who find this behavior acceptable, entertaining or both.
I’m fortunate in that I can actually recount each time I felt that someone mocked me or tried to make me feel like less of a person because of my physical issues. I have been tremendously fortunate in my life, for many reasons, not the least of which is that my disability is practically invisible compared to others with Spina Bifida who live much more difficult lives. But I carry it with me every day even if other people don’t realize it.
Donald Trump went on stage in front of hundreds of people and mocked a man with arthrogryposis just because the man, New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski, wrote something he didn’t like. When he was called on what he did, he did what he often does, he lied. He claimed the hand motions he was making, which clearly were mocking Kovaleski, weren’t doing that. he claimed he didn’t even remember the man. I don’t buy it and plenty of information has come out that indicates, once again, Trump is full of it. Yet somehow you can look around and find people who will still throw their support behind him.
I didn’t intend this to be a rant against Trump, really, even though his words and actions are what triggered this memory for me. I keep thinking about Serge Kovaleski.
Regardless of how old or successful he is, he lives with a physical issue that is out there for everyone to see. Every day, he has to pretend there isn’t someone out there staring at him, pointing at him, or mocking him because that’s how everyone gets through life. Donald Trump and his supporters took this man, a man who didn’t do anything to Trump except do his job, and put him on display as a joke. A gag for Trump to use to prove his superiority, this time over someone who doesn’t look the way Trump thinks they should. It’s a joke to Trump because to him that man is weird and worth mocking.
My writing this will succeed in doing nothing except getting this rant off of my chest. But for now that’ll have to do. I can only do my small part in trying to change the world.for the better. It’s my hope that someday Donald Trump will realize that he has an opportunity to do the same and that it begins with not marginalizing every person he sees as different or weak.
I’m not holding out much hope.